The title of a page as it is entered in the meta tag in the source code of your web page merits your most thoughtful consideration. Regardless of whether you own a well built mini-website or a slowly developed, mature authority site, the title for each page needs to be carefully decided upon for several important reasons.
Search Engine Optimization: The title of a page is a major piece of information that contemporary search engines use to identify the content of any page. In the beginning days of the Internet, search engines put a great deal of faith in the honesty of webmasters to use keyword tags to accurately describe the content of any particular web page. However, as the keyword meta tag became abused by “black hat” web authors, the importance of the title tag of a page grew. Many businesses choose to spend money on this important topic by hiring professional keyword research consultants to help them choose page titles for their web pages.
Top of Browser I.D.: While some web users do not even notice it, the words used in a page’s title tag appear in the top portion of a browser. However, many other users do rely upon that information as a quick clue to the page’s major topic.
Lead In To Search Listings: The title of the page appears at the top of any search engine result that returns your page. It becomes the anchor text in the result, so that, when it is clicked, the user will land on your page. It is blue and underlined so that it is the most noticeable part of your coveted listing.
Text in the Browser Bookmark: If the user chooses to bookmark the page in his or her browser, the title is the default text that is used in the bookmark, itself. Of course, the browser will allow the user to alter those words or, in some browsers, add tags for later reference, most visitors simply accept the default text of the webmaster assigned title.
What follows are some recommendations that serve as a summary of things to consider in choosing the titles of your various website pages.
1. Choose a title for your page that is simply your primary keyword If necessary, you can include two or three keywords or phrases within the title, however you should rank order those, putting the most important keywords first and separating each keyphrase with a space, punctuation such as a dash followed by another space.
2. Be certain the chosen title stands out to everyone who has searched for your keyword when your listing makes an appearance in the search engine’s results.
3. Make certain that the page title is brief by also a complete accurate description of the page. Thus, it will be recognizable and useful to the user who sees it listed among the list of bookmarks in her or his browser.
4. Don’t use the word “home” as your complete title of your home page. That adds no value to your SEO or your users’ experience unless, of course, the page happens to be about the concept of “home.” You can, of course, use that word as part of a slightly longer title, such as “Home of Best Widgets.”
5. Periodically you may want to conduct an experiment with the title of a page to see if some modification has a positive impact upon your SEO, just as you would test any important variable within your site and its individual pages.
Tags: meta data, meta tags, page title, search engine optimization, SEO, title tag, Website Design